Top Flicks

May 30, 1999|By From Staff Reviews

Election *** 1/2 -- Matthew Broderick, once the hottest of teens in ``Ferris Bueller's Day Off,'' goes back to high school as a history teacher mediating a class election. Teen princess Reese Witherspoon, who is 22, co-stars as a highly aggressive candidate in this comedy from Alexander Payne (``Citizen Ruth''). R.

Hideous Kinky *** -- Kate Winslet plays a young British mother who has fled the philandering father of her two kids to search for truth and enlightenment in Morocco in the early '70s, the height of the hippie era when Marrakech was regarded as a Disneyland for adults. R.

Notting Hill *** 1/2 -- Hugh Grant plays an unknown Brit in love with the most famous woman in the world, played by Julia Roberts. He owns a small travel-book store, and she is a huge movie star. The screenplay is by Richard Curtis, who wrote ``Four Weddings and a Funeral,'' and the director is Roger Mitchell. PG-13.

The Ogre * 1/2 -- Schlondorff's ``The Ogre'' is a bit of a beast. An ambitious, fussy-looking adaptation of ``The Erl King'' by Michael Tournier and starring American actor John Malkovich, ``The Ogre'' is a dark fairy tale set in parts of Europe during World War II. It also stars Armin Mueller-Stahl. Unrated, it contains a brief flash of nudity, suggestion of child molestation, a battlefield accident, combat scenes and fire.

Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace *** 1/2 -- The boyhood of Darth Vader, who was fairly cute, precocious and game for anything, is explored in the most ballyhooed movie in Hollywood history as George Lucas goes back to the beginning of the tale of the Skywalkers. PG, with a flatulence gag, lots of bloodless havoc.

Tea With Mussolini ** 1/2 -- Franco Zeffirelli shows his great love for his native Italy in directing his own fictionalized autobiography in a look back at Florence during the rise of Il Duce. PG-13, with wild carryings on for Cher.

The Thirteenth Floor (Not reviewed at press time) -- Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dennis Haysbert and Armin Mueller-Stahl head the cast of yet another virtual-reality thriller. Josef Rusnak directs and Ronald and Ute Emmerich are the powers behind this tale of a man who awakens to find a bloody shirt in his house and his boss reported dead, murdered the night before. R.

A Midsummer Night's Dream ** 1/2 -- Michelle Pfeiffer shimmers as a poetic Titania, and Kevin Kline struts and declaims as a hilarious Bottom, but this retelling of the night in an enchanted wood rarely captures the play's magic. PG-13, with some peekaboo nudity.

The Winslow Boy *** 1/2 -- David Mamet, whose plays include the modern classic ``American Buffalo'' and whose films include last year's ``The Spanish Prisoner,'' takes a radical change of pace as director and adapter of Terence Rattigan's play about a young English schoolboy accused of stealing. The cast includes Mamet's wife, Rebecca Pidgeon, as well as Nigel Hawthorne, Gemma Jones and Jeremy Northam. G.